One Basket

"One Basket" by Edna Ferber, a Pulitzer prize winner, is a collection of rich and brilliant short stories. The majority of the narratives revolve around the social customs of the 20th century and a cross-section of American life. Excerpt «The Woman Who Tried to Be Good [1913] Before she tried to be a good woman she had been a very bad woman—so bad that she could trail her wonderful apparel up and down Main Street, from the Elm Tree Bakery to the railroad tracks, without once having a man doff his hat to her or a woman bow. You passed her on the street with a surreptitious glance, though she was well worth looking at—in her furs and laces and plumes. She had the only full-length mink coat in our town, and Ganz's shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. Hers were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women.»